Tumble dryers with a suction-assisted clothes loading device, which are provided with a drum arranged to be rotated by driving means around a horizontal or slightly inclined rotation axis, are known, where the drum has a revolution wall for containing a load of clothes to be dried, an open loading and unloading end and a back end opposite said loading and unloading end.
These known tumble dryers have at least one drying air intake opening arranged in communication with at least one drying air inlet for the entry of air into the drum, a suction turbine in communication with a plurality of air outlets for extracting air from the drum, and an unloading door that is movable between an open position in which the unloading door allows the exit of clothes through the loading and unloading end of the drum, and a closed position in which the unloading door is facing said loading and unloading end of the drum preventing the exit of clothes through it.
Clothes to be dried are loaded into the drum through a loading opening formed in said unloading door and arranged in a position facing the loading and unloading end of the drum when the door is closed, and said loading opening is connected to a clothes loading duct having a loading mouth in a position that can be comfortably accessed by an operator.
The loading device further includes a first shutter for opening and closing the air flow communication between the drying air intake opening and the inside of the drum, a second shutter for opening and closing the air flow communication between the loading opening and the loading duct, and driving and control means for closing said first shutter and opening said second shutter while the mentioned suction turbine is operating to create a suction air flow in said clothes loading duct assisting the operator in the operation of loading the clothes to be dried into the drum.
Thus, the operator only has to place the items of clothing to be dried close to the loading mouth of the loading tube and the suction air flow completes the loading into the drum by suction.
Nevertheless, this suction loading device is not directly applicable to another type of axial-flow tumble dryer such as that described in international patent application WO 2010/136610, which comprises a rotary drum around a horizontal or slightly inclined rotation axis, where the drum has a non-perforated revolution wall, an open loading end and an also open unloading end opposite said loading end, and where the drying air inlet is in a non-rotational part and facing either the loading end or the unloading end of the drum and said air outlets are in a non-rotational part and facing the other opposite end of the drum, either the unloading end or the loading end.
The tumble dryer described in the aforementioned international patent application WO 2010/136610 has a high drying efficiency due to the fact that the air outlets are located at a level below the rotation axis of the drum, such that the axial air flow created by the suction turbine during drying is forced through the clothes which are being dried tumbling in the lower part of the inside of the drum as a result of the rotation thereof at a speed less than 1 G during drying.
If the suction-assisted loading device of the state of the art is applied to an axial-flow dryer such as the one described in the aforementioned international patent application WO 2010/136610, once the clothes to be dried are introduced in the drum through the loading opening, they would fall due to gravity onto the lower part of the inside of the drum and be pulled by the suction air flow to the non-rotational part where the air outlets are located, and given that these openings are located at a level below the rotation axis, the air outlets would be blocked by the first items of clothing to be dried loaded into the drum and this would interrupt the suction air flow and stop the suction-assisted loading operation.
An objective of the present invention is to provide an axial-flow tumble dryer with a suction-assisted loading device that is provided with means for preventing the drawback described above.